Dream Exploration: No Goodbye
In real life, I lost my grandma in 2007 and my mom in 2023. I had the following dream a month after losing my mom:
I was driving with Granny1 in my maroon Maruti Ritz. We were on a small road that ran alongside an expressway2, like an exit — but instead of descending, it rose a few levels above, giving us a panoramic view of the expressway. A semi-truck3 like
was expected to come down the expressway, and granny was supposed to get in and go to another city.
Suddenly, I noticed a man with us in the car. He asked me a question. I answered, and inadvertently gave away more than I wanted to. He told me to stop the car and get out — of my own car. He was like a Lynchian villain — ordinary-looking but all-powerful, the kind it would be dangerous to question or argue with. He’d have his way regardless.
So I stopped the car. He told me to get out, open the boot, take my bags, and board the truck in Granny’s place. I took three bags out of the boot, and observed that one was empty and another was half-empty — which struck me as strange. Why was I carrying empty bags4?
Anyway, I took the bags, and Granny was sitting innocently inside the car unaware of what was happening5. Since she was inside and I was outside, I couldn’t say goodbye to her6. The Powerful Man didn’t let me. He told me that I would ride the truck to another city7, while the car — with Granny in it — would go to a different city, and I would never see her again8.
Reluctantly, I took the bags, and he got into my car and drove off9. I saw the 18-wheeler coming down the expressway at high speed, which was perfectly smooth, almost empty10, and stretching into infinity — unlike the Chennai Expressway, which ends in Chennai11. No one knew what mysterious places lay ahead. I knew what I was supposed to do — and the dream ended.
A stand-in for Mom.
In real life, after traveling on freeways during my visits to the US, I had been waiting a decade for the chance to drive down one myself. When my mom passed away, I finally did — on the newly opened Bangalore-Mysore Expressway, driving to immerse her ashes in the Cauvery.
A symbol of my fascination for all things American.
In real life, as a kid, Mom and I regularly used those bags when traveling to places like Cuttack or Vizianagaram. But by the time of Mom’s death, the zips had broken and the bags had worn out — much like her body.
These days, we use wheeled suitcases, which are more convenient. The old bags served no purpose anymore. I could have still kept them, but Mom had held on to too much junk for two decades, which I was sick of. So I got rid of them.
Still, it tugged at my heartstrings. I had thrown away something that connected me to my childhood and my special memories with Mom. That's why, in the dream, I was carrying empty bags — I was carrying this emotional baggage.
In real life, I wondered whether Mom sensed her impending death in that final week.
In real life, I regretted not being given a final chance to say goodbye to Mom, to thank her for such a wonderful life she gave me, and to wish her well on her continuing journey.
In real life, my landlady had lost her husband to cancer. She told me that he wasn’t gone — just in another room next to hers, one she couldn’t enter, and he couldn’t enter hers.
The Powerful Man symbolised Lord Yama from Hindu mythology.
In real life, Mom had brought her personal and household items from house to house and city to city, from my days as a schoolboy in Vizag, to college, to my job in Bangalore. They were her constant companions throughout life, things that brought her a sense of stability and routine when life was troubling.
But they filled the house the house and made it feel cluttered and annoying to live in.
So when Mom passed away, I threw away many of her cherished possessions. But I couldn’t escape the guilt that her most valued possessions had passed on to someone who didn’t care for all of them — to whom some were just junk.
I like my car, and in the dream, the Powerful Man taking it away from me symbolised how, no matter how special something is to us, at the time of death, our cherished possessions pass on to someone else, at which point they lose their special value and become ordinary objects, to be kept or thrown out as the new owner sees fit.
Just as the truck’s engine is far more powerful than my car’s, death — once set in motion — is unstoppable. It doesn’t slow down, detour, or wait.
The afterlife stretches far beyond what we can perceive while alive.